Legal Research is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #37 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for legal research students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,726 master's degrees in legal research during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Legal Research School for Your Master's Degree
The legal research master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on legal research students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other legal research students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt legal research students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized legal research related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for legal research students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Legal Research Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Temple University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in legal research. Located in the large city of Philadelphia, Temple is a public university with a very large student population.
Legal Research master's degree recipients from Temple University receive an earnings boost of approximately $14,931 above the average earnings of legal research graduates.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in legal research has to look into American University. The American University is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Washington.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the legal research program make an average of $65,919 in their early career salary.
It's difficult to beat Drexel University if you want to pursue a master's degree in legal research. Located in the city of Philadelphia, Drexel is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, legal research master's recipients typically earn about $66,306 in the first five years of their career.
St John's University - New York is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in legal research. STJ is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Queens.
Students who graduate with their master's from the legal research program state that they receive average early career wages of $74,248.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
The legal research master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
